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"Last year Karla Hoff, an economist at the World Bank who is currently working at Princeton University, and her colleagues reported the results of experiments conducted in villages in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (American Economic Review, vol 98, p 494). In these tests, two players started out with 50 rupees each. The first could choose to give his to the second, in which case the experimenters added a further 100 rupees, giving the second player 200 rupees in total. The second player could decide to keep the money for himself, or share it equally with the first player. A third player then entered the game, who could punish the second player - for each 2 rupees he was willing to spend, the second player was docked 10 rupees.
The results were startling. Even when the second player shared the money fairly, two-thirds of the time the newcomer decided to punish him anyway - a spiteful act with seemingly no altruistic payoff. "We asked one guy why," says Hoff. "He said he thought it was fun."
Hoff found that high-caste players were more likely to punish their fellow gamers spitefully than low-caste players, leading her to suggest that context is everything. It is not that people in Uttar Pradesh are nastier than elsewhere, but rather that the structure of their society makes them acutely conscious of status."
From a fascinating article that tries to answer the following:
But why do we inflict pain for no gain? On the face of it, it is rather a perverse way of going about things. Does spitefulness stem from an affronted sense of fairness? Or something altogether darker: envy, lust for revenge - or perhaps even pure sadism?
Do go read the whole thing.
Silly facebook song
Labels: Poetry
My god!
Thoughts for today
"In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism."
The above words were apparently written by Oscar Wilde, in his long essay, The Soul of Man Under Socialism. (Correct me, somebody, if this is not correct). In the same essay, he also writes:
"It is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought."
Hmm. Hmmm. Much food for thought.
Not quite child's play
Songs of sympathy, 1
Last night I cried in a movie
You cry, if that's all you can do
Last week I stopped reading a book
It hurt too much to see it through
There's bitterness there's misery
Things going wrong in my homeland
I fret but I don't do much more
It is not easy to take a stand
Besides, there are consequences
To building worlds better and free
'Coz somewhere up in Raipur jail,
A man is in for sympathy.
I saw a girl with legs splayed wide
She must have been eight or nine
She had a baby on her hips
She touched my arm then touched her lips
I knew her from everyday touch
She liked my hands, stroked my watch
She says, will you give something today?
Maybe tomorrow? But no, I say
Don't ask again, I will not pay
Don't tell me that you're hungry.
It's been two years in Raipur jail
A man is in for sympathy.
Men sit on streets with cut off arms
They crawl to thrust your shame at you
You toss a coin but not always
They don't even expect you to
There are no rights about these things
Nobody has the right to ask
That you set this country right
To bring people out of the dark
You have a life, so you're afraid.
No reason why you shouldn't be.
'Coz somewhere up in Raipur jail
A man is in for sympathy.
I heard two girls on prime time speak
The newspaper went on all week
About long years of rape at home
We talked about it on the phone
This strange beast they call incest
This man who wasn't just a guest
Where do you go when danger sleeps
In your bed and it's yours for keeps
How does a child escape and where
How to start over when she's free?
And somewhere up in Raipur jail
A man is in for sympathy.
Tonight I'll watch a DVD
A story sweet and sad and blue
I'll cry for people dead and gone
And for the times we fail the truth
But I'll remember not to howl
No screaming, shouting, nothing loud
About rage or incessant pain
Not a word of blood or shroud
There are too many ears around
And not enough eyes that see
That somewhere up in Raipur jail
A man is in for sympathy.
[I wrote it for we all know who. But mostly, to try and figure out the nature of the crime of sympathy]
Labels: Poetry
in which the producer-multiplex owner battle forces the blogger to protest
Somebody outlaw this
Saw and heard Mahashweta Devi today.
Random question from girl in audience:
"What is your take on the term 'feminism'?"
This was followed by a half statement along the lines of '...actually, I also do not agree with that term...'
Oh dearOh dearOh dear! These children who do not read and then open their mouths in public. I am considering supporting legislation that requires people to have read at least two hundred books (including at least five books by contemporary women writers) before they are allowed to ask questions at literary events.
Facebook, facebook!
issues. Bizarre but such is inscrutable corporate logic.Hang in there. We will be back.In the Wake of the Wounded Woman
Shame, shame
The the-80s-were-good-for-cinema post
Chewy introspects
A few days ago, a friend had handed me a copy of A Grasshopper’s Pilgrimage and asked me whether I’d like to review it on this blog. I was a little surprised because I’ve had very few such requests, and besides, reviewing is something I do very reluctantly, because it feels like too much of a bother having to explain why a book or film worked, or didn’t. But here goes:
I must begin with a disclaimer and a confession. I am totally not into spiritual reading. I shy away from books that come with spiritual/religious tags and over the years, I’ve become suspicious of anything that describes itself as a ‘journey of the soul’ or something along those lines. Which is not to denigrate the genre. It is just that I personally start to get restless and irritable at the mention of the soul.
It was, therefore, with a small measure of trepidation and guilt that I agreed to do this review. It isn’t fair to approach a book with shelf-sized biases. That said, I have to confess that this book was a pleasant surprise. It was smooth reading right through. Author Manjushree Abhinav chose to tell an honest story instead of wrapping up a sermon in a novel’s cloak.
A Grasshopper’s Pilgrimage takes you through confusion and heartbreak, and the romancing of Gopika’s soul. The protagonist is a young, attractive woman from a family of atheists and finds herself inexorably drawn to Gurus, meditation centers, ashrams and the like, much to the consternation of her revolutionary grandparents. Each time she thinks she has found a solution, she is forced to reconsider – questions, answers, solutions, free will, screws, all of that.
Those are big words and big dilemmas, yes. But I think what works in this novel is that the protagonist is very real. Her language feels real. Her family and social context feels real. Her disappointment about love not being such a pat little affair, and her fears about not being good at her job, not knowing what she is good at – these are themes anyone can identify with, regardless of how deeply rooted they are in the spiritual realm. For a spiritual book, this turned out to be surprisingly temporal fare, and I’m glad I read it after all.
My personal take-home from this novel: it forced me to think. Mostly about why I resist spiritual reading (or viewing) so hard. I think I found some answers too. But that’s for me to chew on, alone.
To others, I would recommend the book if you’re looking for reading that isn’t so light that it becomes meaningless, and yet is not so heavy that you’ve got to shake your head every ten pages to make room for more verbiage. Finally, it is a well-written account of a young woman looking for – presumptuous of me to say this, but I’ll say it anyway – herself, and of the people who helped her get there. It is a story well-told and that’s why we read, don’t we?
Of verbal slips, binaries, and a very quick dip into feminism
Labels: feminism
New means, new genre
Labels: writing
This is to say, I haven't forgotten
Thoughts, borrowed and echoed
Two points of madness
Mumbai, post.